So, you’ve mounted your new scope on your hunting rifle and you’re heading to the range to sight it in. Establishing your point of aim may seem like a simple task, but as with many things shooting and hunting, there is no one single standard. Point-blank range can make things easy in the field.

Tip 1:
Forget Hollywood.
‘Point-blank range’ is a popular term in TV and movies, suggesting a person was shot with a handgun less than a foot away. What the term really means is that a bullet fired from a weapon will strike a target without having to adjust the point of aim by holding over or under the aiming point. This is a variable distance, and it depends on the acceptable target size and the ballistic arc of the individual bullet.

Tip 2:
Understand the Arc.
When the bullet leaves the muzzle, gravity starts pulling on it. To hit a target at 100 yards, you have to raise the muzzle to shoot slightly high so the bullet travels in an arc. It is above a horizontal line most of the way to the target, intersecting the line and hitting the target in the center at 100 yards. If the target were not there, the bullet would continue to drop in the arc, eventually hitting the ground.

Tip 3:
How Big is Your Target?
When hunting, your effective target is often much larger than the center crosshairs on a paper target. Assuming a deer heart is four inches from top to bottom, it matters not where in that heart the bullet strikes – the effective target size is a circle four inches top to bottom. Sighting in for point-blank range means you can aim at the center of the target area, and from the muzzle to the effective maximum range, the bullet will hit somewhere inside the effective target area.

Tip 4:
The Old Pipe Test.
Imagine shooting through a pipe the size of your effective target (in this case, four inches). The muzzle is at one end, the bullet comes out and rises until it almost touches the pipe – say 1.99 inches above center, one-half of the effective target size. It then starts to drop until a point just short of the bottom wall of the pipe, say 1.99 inches below center. That distance is the maximum range for point-blank shooting.

Tip 5:
The Ammo and the Target.
Point-blank range is established by choosing your ammunition and target size, and doing some calculations. Don’t be freaked out, because there are a lot of resources out there. Some ammo boxes have a ballistic chart printed on them, charts are readily available on the internet, and there are many online applications (my favorite is on the Hawke Optics website). In this example, determine the point the bullet will rise two inches, and then fall two inches. That will be the maximum point-blank range. The key is determining the point where you should put the scope crosshair aim point, and that is where the online calculators make your life easier.

Tip 6:
A Real Example.
I put a Hawke Endurance scope, mounted 1½ inches high, on top of a Ruger American rifle chambered in .450 Bushmaster. I used Hornady ammunition with a 250-grain bullet, which has a ballistic coefficient of 0.22 and a muzzle velocity of 2,200 feet per second. I put these numbers into a ballistic calculator, with a target size of four inches. Faster than I can blink it told me that if I sight-in 1.92 inches high on a paper target at 100 yards, anytime I pull the trigger it will hit within a 4-inch circle from 0 to 174 yards. For the terrain where I hunt deer, that’s about perfect. Just remember – this is not a replacement for practice. After you do the calculations, get to the range and set out targets at various distances to verify the results.

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